The activists of the Forum Minority Research Institute and Students\u00b4 Network have conducted a joint research on bilingualism in the municipalities of Southern Slovakia, specifically on the use of the Hungarian language in the official discourse. The research results clearly show that if we want to analyze the use of language comprehensively, we must distinguish the written and oral discourse. In the Hungarian-speaking communities, two Hungarians address each other in Hungarian \u2013 whether for office, healthcare institution, meeting of local government or religious ceremony. However, it is clear, that the staff of a local government office or a health facility communicates with the client in the language he or she speaks out. In the case of written communication, we can see a different situation: on boards and signs, the Hungarian inscription is often missing; even in the Hungarian-majority municipalities, Hungarian inhabitants submit documents to the Hungarian-speaking officials in Slovak; internal documents of the Hungarian self-governments are automatically written in Slovak only, saying that they have no capacity for translating them into Hungarian, but in this respect, the lack of demand of the population, their adaptability and resignation are not negligible either.
\nThe research drew attention to the unexploited possibilities in the use of languages, and perhaps upon the next occasion, the Hungarian inscription will not be omitted on the boards and tables, or, public officers will not forget to mention the Hungarian clients that they have the right to write their submissions in the Hungarian language as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The activists of the Forum Minority Research Institute and Students\u00b4 Network have conducted a joint research on bilingualism in the municipalities of Southern Slovakia, specifically on the use of the Hungarian language in the official discourse. The research results clearly show that if we want to analyze the use of language comprehensively, we must distinguish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555,568,540],"tags":[],"post_year":[],"coauthors":[484,496],"class_list":["post-2318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum-social-science-review","category-studies","category-szemle"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n